On Sat, 3 Dec 2022 at 02:03, David Sankel via Boost
I'm interested to hear your opinions as to what happened over that time
Some thoughts from no one special, just a jobbing craftsman scraping a living... I've used Boost for quite a while, I think 1.28.0 was my first download. At that time the Standard Library was a bit sparse, so Boost was the only way to gain certain features and facilities, if you didn't want to roll your own. In my mind it was a thing of awesome wonder, even more so when I read Karlsson's book and understood a little of how it was done behind the curtain. Kinda taught me C++ craftsmanship. Dimov's Bind library just blew me away! Then the language and standard library started evolving. Many of the Boost base libraries became (almost) part of the standard library, it became harder to justify using Boost at work. At the same time the management of using Boost in work projects became a bit more challenging. Do you always build with the latest stable, or nail down a version and not automatically receive latest goodies? For a while Boost was not as stable as one would have liked, and not as well tested or supported, and that tarnished the brand. Since then the marginalisation of Boost has continued. Less and less of Boost is in the 'must have' category as the language and standard library mature. I wonder if Boost has had its day and served its purpose in its current form. Kinda sad though, as libraries like Proto still offer wondrous goodies, but they're just too niche. For comparison, libraries like Adobe's ATL do a few fancy things I'd love to see in Boost.